More Thoughts on Guns and Murders

A comment by one of our regulars (VOV) the other day – along with a video posted by another reader in a different discussion – got me thinking.  And it led me to look at a few numbers.

I know that’s a huge surprise.  Try to get over the shock.  (smile)

What I ran across wasn’t really surprising to me, except in one area. But it might be of general interest, so I decided to post what I found and my conclusions.  They concern guns, murder, and the distribution of the latter.

In 2012, the USA had a murder rate (which includes non-negligent homicides) of 4.7 per 100,000 population. That year, the US population was somewhat less than 314 million (313,873,685); there were somewhat under 15,000 murders (14,866).

What I found interesting was where those murders occurred. As most of our regular readers might guess, it seems a disproportionate number of them occurred in cities.

1.  All Cities over 250,000.

I was able to find data on the murder rate in all US cities over 250,000.   I then did a bit of number crunching (Excel is good for that) to determine the number of murders in those cities. Roundoff error may have resulted in a minor error, since I used rounding to get integer totals – but I don’t think it did.  If it did, I doubt any error is more than by 1 or 2.  Here’s what I came up with:

US Cities over 250,000		Rest of USA
Total Population	55,501,250	Total Population	258,372,435
Total Murders	5,805	Total Murders	9,061
Murder Rate	10.5	Murder Rate	3.5

Yep – for all US cities over 250,000 in population, the aggregate murder rate is roughly 3x that of the rest of the country. Although US cities with population greater than 250,000 have less than 18% of the total US population, they account for 39% of US homicides.

If you think that’s an indication that murder is much more of a problem in cities than in the rest of America – that’s correct. But stay tuned; there’s a bit of a plot twist coming.

2.  All US Cities over 500,000.

I decided to look next at cities over 500k in population (Excel makes sorting REALLY easy). There are 33 such US cities.

The results were a mildly surprising.

US Cities over 500,000		Rest of USA
Total Population	41,237,116	Total Population	272,636,569
Total Murders	4,114	Total Murders	10,752
Murder Rate	10.0	Murder Rate	3.9

Interesting. Though still disproportionate, considering only cities with a population over 500,000 actually narrowed the “gap” a bit. While some of that is due to adding the cities between 250,000 and 500,000 in population (and their murders) back into the “rest of USA” category, having any drop-off at all still seems . . . well, a bit odd.

3.  Well, How about 600,000+?

Here ya go. Not much change, actually.  Curious.

US Cities over 600,000		Rest of USA
Total Population	37,852,847	Total Population	276,020,838
Total Murders	3,783	Total Murders	11,0833
Murder Rate	10.0	Murder Rate	4.0

4.  The “Top 10” – US Cities over 1,000,000

So, I decided to look at only the “biggies” – e.g., the 10 largest US Cities. As it turns out, there are also precisely the US cities that top 1,000,000 in population. So, I took a look.  Here’s what I found.

US Cities over 1,000,000 (“Top 10”)		Rest of USA
Total Population	25,494,200	Total Population	288,379,485
Total Murders	2.,261	Total Murders	12,605
Murder Rate	8.9	Murder Rate	4.4

Interesting – and, frankly, a bit surprising.

The numbers continue to converge, which along with the previous data indicates the problem doesn’t always get worse as cities get larger.  One would guess it should, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

5.  The “Worst Offenders”.

So, let’s look instead at the “worst of the worst” and see what we can deduce. Sorting on murder rate and taking the “worst offenders”, here’s the list – and the numbers:

The “Worst Offenders”
State	City	Population	Murder Rate	Number of Murders
Michigan	Detroit	707,096	54.6	386
Louisiana	New Orleans	362,874	53.2	193
Missouri	St. Louis	318,667	35.5	113
Maryland	Baltimore	625,474	34.9	218
New Jersey	Newark	278,906	34.4	96
California	Oakland	399,487	31.8	127
California	Stockton	299,105	23.7	71
Missouri	Kansas City	464,073	22.6	105
Pennsylvania	Philadelphia	1,538,957	21.5	331
Ohio	Cleveland	393,781	21.3	84
Tennessee	Memphis	657,436	20.2	133
Georgia	Atlanta	437,041	19	83
Illinois	Chicago	2,708,382	18.5	501
New York	Buffalo	262,434	18.3	48
Florida	Miami	414,327	16.7	69
Ohio	Cincinnati	296,204	15.5	46
Wisconsin	Milwaukee	599,395	15.2	91
Oklahoma	Oklahoma City	595,607	14.3	85
DC	Washington	632,323	13.9	88
Ohio	Toledo	286,020	13.6	39
Pennsylvania	Pittsburgh	312,112	13.1	41

Interesting. No apparent real rhyme or reason here. Some are large cities (Chicago, Philly); others are not. NYC and Boston didn’t make the list – but neither did Dallas, Houston, or LA. The list almost seems to have been culled at random from the list of US cities with population over 250,000.

But whatever the underlying reasons these are the 21 US cities with the worst murder rates in the USA.  In fact, it’s all of the US cities with a population over 250,000 having a murder rate over 13.

In the aggregate, those 21 cities have only 4% of the US population.  But they account for almost 20% of US murders – and their aggregate murder rate is just a hair less than 5x the national average.

Significantly, though – those “gun crazy” states with really low ratings from the “Brady Bunch” don’t exactly seem overrepresented on the list.  None of the states with a Brady score of zero (AK, AZ, and UT) have a city on the list – and yes, each has a city large enough to be listed there.  In fact, if you do a quick count you’ll find that a handful of “states” – specifically, CA, PA, MD, NJ, IL, NY, MI, and the District of Columbia – account for almost half (10 of 21) of the cities listed.

The average Brady Score of those eight “states” in 2011 was 51.375 (the “Brady Bunch” didn’t assign DC a Brady Score in 2011, but for computation here I’m arbitrarily assigning DC a Brady Score equal to that of NY). That average would meet the criteria for a “3-star” rating from the “Brady Bunch” with respect to the strength of their gun control laws.  Indeed, all of these states received at least 2 stars from the “Brady Bunch” in 2011.

In fact, of the 11 states with a “2-star” or higher rating from the “Brady Bunch”, nearly 2/3 of them (7 of 11) have a city on the “worst offenders” list above.  I’m guessing it would be an even 2/3 (8 of 12) if the “Brady Bunch” had published a Brady Score for DC.

In contrast, “gun crazy” TX – which has no cities on the list above – had a 2011 Brady Score of 4 and a 0 star rating from the “Brady Bunch”.  Plus, the US city with the lowest murder rate – Plano, with a 2012 murder rate of 0.4  (not a misprint; that really is intended to read “zero point four”) – is also in Texas.  Go figure.

6.  Comments.

A few caveats and comments before I get to my conclusions.

The “cities” above are exactly that – legal and political entities.  They aren’t their entire metro area in many cases; they’re often ringed with smaller cities and towns (the famed “Suburbia”).  However, they do generally include the old, urban “inner city” areas for the  region in question.

As I noted above, the number of murders for each city is calculated from the city’s population and its murder rate, then rounded to the nearest integer (best I can tell, it’s kinda hard to kill nine-tenths of a person).  So it’s possible that there may be a round off error in there somewhere – I don’t think there is, but since it’s possible I’ll mention that fact here.

Data for 2012 national-level statistics was obtained a site called “disastercenter.com“.  They in turn give the source of their data as being FBI UCI statistics.  I didn’t verify that, but I did spot check their 2012 US murder rate against another source and found they matched – so I don’t think they’re “blowing smoke”.

Data source for murder rate and population for 2012 for US cities of population 250,000 and over was Wikipedia.  Wikipedia data also appears to be taken from FBI UCI crime statistics.

A personally retained softcopy of the “Brady Bunch” Brady Score Scorecard for 2011 was used to determined 2011 state Brady Scores.

Microsoft Excel was used to “run the numbers”.

. . .

My conclusions?  Threefold.

First:  gun murder does seem to be more a city problem than anything else.  But it’s not equally a problem in all cities – whether your talking big cities or smaller ones.   Some mid-size and large cities have a very good handle on the problem (San Diego and El Paso to name two), and even NYC and LA are doing a pretty good job; ditto for many other small- and mid-sized cities.  Others have issues, but aren’t sucking wind like the cities on the last list above.

But some cities of all sizes have a major problem – including cities next door to other cities doing a good job, and with similar gun laws (e.g., Newark, NJ, and NYC).  Local conditions, policies, and quirks seem much more important than a city’s size.

Second:  My original opinion about the Brady Score hasn’t changed.  The acronym for “Brady Score” is “BS” – and that’s perfectly descriptive.  Legal restrictions on firearms ownership by law-abiding citizens don’t seem to do squat to prevent murders.

Chicago and DC legally banned most firearms until recently, and it’s still virtually impossible for a citizen without connections to get a handgun carry permit (or even legally purchase a gun) in either location.  But both are among the cities with murder rates grossly higher than the US average.  And of the US cities with the 10 worst (highest) murder rates, 6 of them are from states that the “Brady Bunch” awarded 2 or more stars in 2011 for having Brady Scores in the top 22% of states:  CA (2 – Oakland, Stockton), NJ (Newark), MI (Detroit), MD (Baltimore), and PA (Philadelphia).

Third:   Little Marty-boi O’Malley should shut his dissembling, hypocritical mouth regarding guns and gun control.  He obviously doesn’t know sh!t from Shinola when it comes to preventing gun violence.

Why do I say that?   One word:  Baltimore.  Look above for the details.

Category: Gun Grabbing Fascists, Guns, Politics, Society